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First of all, Stolen is just about the ugliest PC game I've ever come across. It uses light and shadow to try and hide some of the ugliest low resolution textures seen in a PC game since Duke Nukem 3D at its default resolution of 320x200, and though the shadowing itself isn't all bad, the lighting is a crime against humanity. Never before has bloom been overused to the point of rendering a scene as if it were illuminated with 2000 searchlights set on “Batman Forever”, but Stolen does this in nearly every other scene. If you've ever seen the movie “The Crow”, you'll remember fondly the beautiful noir lighting and shadow that overcast every plaintive, sorrowful scene, and though I'm loath to even mention such a powerful movie in a review of such a hideous, wretched game, it serves my purpose because it represents exactly the opposite of what the Stolen world looks like. Overbright textures, improperly illuminated rooms, piss poor shadowing, and by far the most obvious problem of all, the overpowering potency of washed-out ugliness that pervades the entire game from the moment you hit the start menu until the last scene fades to black. As if this weren't bad enough, out of the box the game was completely unplayable on any computer with an Nvidia graphics card until a recent patch, sporting single digit framerates even on a 3ghz/6800 Ultra monster with the graphics and resolution bumped to minimum. The patch fixed this to an extent, but the game still performs under par, and the mouse lag throughout the game is just atrocious, bordering on unplayable. The audio is irrelevant, with adequate voice acting for the heroine and passable sound effects. Nothing too great, but you notice the audio in this game much more without your vision, it having been eliminated by the aforementioned hideous bloom and lighting.
I hope this review has illuminated the truth for you, and prevented you from making the same mistake others across the Internet have already made when they purchased this pile of smeg. Are you starting to see why the developer went out of business before the game even hit the shelves? The writing on the wall was in 60pt neon for these guys -- No way did anyone in their wildest dreams believe that this game would be a critical or commercial success. Anyone who believes the hype and buys Stolen earns Anthony's special Chump of the Year award for 2005.